“The Mc Luhan Perspective: Of Massaging Mind and Media”

McLuhan went on to describe the emotional rigor and physical participation television extracts of its audience calling TV a ‘cool medium’. In the era of the Vietnam war, “a hot shooting war” he notes that a “cool medium such as TV involves the audience so deeply they find the war unbearable. Show the same war on press photography etc. and people won’t feel so badly about it. On TV they feel really involved.”
Revisiting this exchange in the era of cultural convergence that social media and digital culture creates globally we may ask today which medium has gained the emotional and reactive foreground of our participation as an audience?

This mini symposium held as part of Micronation/Macronation 2012 Project.

Speaker:

Steven Kovats
Nina Czegledy
Alessandro Ludovico
David Teh
Enin Supriyanto

Steven Kovats

Stephen Kovats, initiator, designer and director of international projects, symposia, exhibitions and academic programs in the fields of media culture and mobility, architecture and urbanism, previously he was director of Germany’s foremost event for art and digital culture – transmediale. He was active as chief curator and media arts researcher at V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam, with projects in Europe and North America as a media arts researcher, curator, spatial designer and artistic project conceptualist at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Germany.

As founder of the Electronic Media Interpretation Studio and director of the ”Ostranenie” Electronic Media Forum he was profoundly engaged in examining and actively developing the role played by electronic art and media upon the societal transformation process in Central
and Eastern Europe, as well as more recent projects engaging China and regions of structural development.

Nina Czegledy

Nina Czegledy is an independent media artist, curator and writer. Over the last ten years she has programmed and curated over twenty international media art/video programs and touring exhibitions that were presented in 28 countries. Together with Iliyana Nedkova she has organized the Crossing Over, a workshop/media residency project for producing and presenting video shorts, which has been realized in Sofia (1996 and 1997), Novi Sad (1998), Ljubljana (1999), Colombus, Ohio (2000) and Liverpool (2001). One of her most recent works is Digitazed Bodies, interdisciplinary project exploring the ways in which the rapidly developing technologies affect the perception of our bodies – the project has evolved through a series of online events, exhibitions, performances, video programs and public lectures in Canada (2000), Hungary (2001) and Slovenia (2001).

Czegledy is also a board member of ISEA, Images Festival, Interaccess Electronic Media arts Centre and Charles St. Video. She has published both internationally and in her native Hungary.

Alessandro Ludovico

Alessandro Ludovico is a media critic and editor in chief of the highly respected Neural magazine from 1993, (Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica 2004). He is the author of several essays on digital culture, he co-edited ‘Mag.Net Reader’ (1 and 2). He’s one of the founding contributors of the Nettime community, one of the founders of the Mag.Net (Electronic Cultural Publishers)’ organization and he teaches ‘Computer Art’ and ‘Interface Aesthetics’ at the Academy of Art in Carrara.

 

 

 

 

David Teh

David Teh’s work spans art history, literary, critical and cultural theory, with an emphasis on contemporary art, public art and new media art. He is a founder of Fibreculture, an online community for digital culture and politics. During his residency, Teh worked at the Office of
Contemporary Art and Culture in Thailand, assisting with the curatorship and documentation of public contemporary art programs and meeting with artists, curators and arts managers in Thailand and Asia. He also staged workshops and exhibitions of Australian digital video art in the region. The residency widened his knowledge of the regional contemporary arts scene and inspired his own curatorial collaborations and exhibition projects.

 

Enin Supriyanto

Enin Supriyanto is a writer and curator. His writings are oftenly published in local newspaper and art magazines. He has been involved in various Indonesian contemporary artevents/projects as curator, working together with artist communities/groups or art galleries. He write books on various aspects of Indonesian contemporary visual arts, e.g.: 50 Years of Indonesian Printmaking (KPG & Bentara Budaya, Jakarta, 2001); Indonesian Modern Paintings from the collection of
Bentara Budaya (KPG & Bentara Budaya, Jakarta, 2004), (editor and writer) monograph on the life and works of the late Rahmat Subani Irfani, Rays of Lights (Edwin’s Gallery, Jakarta, May 2006). One of his recent book, written & edited with Marc Bollansee, Indonesian Contemporary Art Now, 1996-2006 (SNP Editions, Singapore) is due to be distributed on January 2007.